


That's All I Can Say

by icannothinkofaname



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: 'cores were humans once' headcanon, 1980s, Foreshadowing, Gen, Lots and Lots of Foreshadowing, Pre-Canon, anyways you'll have to pry the 'doug and wheatley were friends' headcanon outta my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 06:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14688150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icannothinkofaname/pseuds/icannothinkofaname
Summary: It's typical for new Aperture employees to get the short end of the stick with assignments, but Doug and Wheatley have never seen anything quite like this "defective" turret.





	That's All I Can Say

" _AH -_ \- oh, look at that, it's not on. That's a relief."

Wheatley dropped the box of files and papers onto his desk, tilting his head at the turret sitting on the opposite side of the room. The model was plugged into what seemed to be an endless assortment of wires, each of them leading to the nearby monitor. Doug sat hunched over the keyboard, barely acknowledging Wheatley with a nod before turning back to his coding. Not that Wheatley minded much. After a couple months of sharing the same cramped office, he'd learned to accept that Doug wasn't much of a talker.

Which was probably for the best, considering he himself could never shut up.

"So!" He exclaimed, plopping down into his chair. "What's plaguing this poor little guy? What bug are you trying to," he paused. "Debug, I guess? That sounds weird to say out loud, there really should be a better word for that, shouldn't there be?"

Subsequently, Doug had also gotten used to Wheatley's idiosyncrasies (within a reasonable amount), and didn't respond to his rant with more than a shrug.

"They didn't tell you what was wrong with it?" Wheatley glanced back and forth between Rattmann's fast-paced typing and the turret placed beside him. "That hardly seems like a good way to fix a problem, you know? I mean, if someone just handed me some broken robot and just said there was  _something_ wrong with it, I wouldn't have anywhere to start. I mean, from the looks of it though, you seem to be handling it rather well, so there's some credit for that. Or, unless your shrug meant you didn't want to  _talk_ about it, rather than you not knowing what's happening. In which case, I'll stop talking. Right now. Here I go, not talking, not saying another word about your current -- I imagine very important -- programming. Just not going to say-"

Doug heaved a sigh and rested his head against his desk, cutting off Wheatley's monologue.

Wheatley blinked. "Uh, you know what? Maybe it'd be best if I just went back out of the room for a moment. Or, maybe longer, or something."

"No," came Doug's blunt response. "It's not you." He straightened his back with an audible crack, before gesturing at the code running across his screen. "Don't know what's wrong with this thing."

"Huh. They really didn't tell you anything?"

"Nothing. And there's nothing wrong in the code."

Wheatley hummed to himself. "I don't suppose it's a mechanical issue?" He spun his chair around and wheeled it closer to the troublesome turret in question. "Because I could probably maybe help you out if that's the case. I mean, might as well make the most out of being stuck in the same office, you know? Not that, not that I mind, of course-"

"They said the mechanical diagnostics were fine. It _has_ to be something in here." Doug spoke with a great intensity, leaning in closer to the computer screen as if looking closer would help him see whatever the problem was. "Besides. You have your own work to do."

"Oh, right, right right right, I should get on that, shouldn't I?" Wheatley used his feet to propel himself back into his desk, spinning around once more and taking a half-finished report out of his box.

The two finally got back to work, Doug typing away and Wheatley muttering a steam of consciousness as he scrawled out incomplete diagnostic report after incomplete diagnostic report. (Some days it felt like his only real job here was filling in the information his supervisors didn't feel like writing down.)

* * *

 The white noise was finally broken a few hours later, when Wheatley slammed his pen back on the desk with unnecessary force.

"Well, that's all fine and done with!" He grinned, standing up and stretched his arms. "Now all I have to do is turn this in," he began, "to, uh... who was it again? Hm... no, that doesn't sound right..." This was one of the constants of working with Wheatley, him reciting his to-do list out loud with a long period of hemming and hawing.

"Well, either way." He looked over his shoulder. "How're you holding up?"

 A quick glance at Doug, with his head in his hands and an unbroken stare at his malfunctioning turret, immediately gave Wheatley the answer he'd been asking for.

"Ah, that bad, huh?" He wandered on over to Doug's desk, kneeling down to look the turret in its 'eye' before jumping up again.

Doug flinched, finally breaking his dead stare to shoot Wheatley a look.

"Er, sorry, sorry. I just got excited. But! I think I have an idea! On how to fix your little turret friend over here." He paused. "Well, not really to  _fix_ him, but at least to get a start on  _what_ you're supposed to be fixing in the first place."

Doug raised an eyebrow. "And that is?"

Wheatley clasped his hands together loudly. "Just turn it on!"

The split second of silence after that was deafening.

"You want me to turn it on," Doug didn't ask as much as he stated.

"What better way to figure out what's wrong than that," Wheatley retorted.

"You want me to turn a  _turret_ on. In here."

"Yes! I mean, no, no, I mean... it's broken anyways, right? So it probably won't start firing at us, right?"

"I'd prefer to be more certain than 'it  _probably_ won't shoot us.'"

"I mean, why else would they send it here? There's obviously something wrong with its main function, and its main function is, well, you know. Shooting."

"There's a lot more than can go wrong in the turret's coding. And I'm really not in the mood to get  _shot_ , Wheatley."

"You're not going to get shot! I'm telling you, it's all going to be fine."

**"I'm different,"** the turret said.

The two scientists jumped into the air, disrupting their argument to stare intently at the now awake and fully functional (???) turret.

"...Wheatley?"

"Yes?"

"Did it say something, or am I..." Doug trailed off.

Wheatley looked at Doug for a moment, before shaking his head. "No, no. I definitely heard that too. It said... something."

**"She'll save you, and end you with the same hand."** The broken turret focused its red light on the wall. Wheatley and Doug exchanged another look before jumping into action, Wheatley grabbing the turret and looking it over, and Doug opening up its programming.

"There's - _none_ of this is in here." Doug scanned each line as fast as he possibly could, but there was nothing. Nothing programmed in, no path redirecting to this. It's as if this was coming from nothing. A program being run by a supposedly sleeping machine. "It's impossible."

"I don't see anything either!" Wheatley spun the turret in his hands, checking for any sign of obvious structural damage. "Maybe if I open it up?"

The turret's red light aimed directly at Wheatley's forehead. The room froze. Wheatley's hands shook as he whispered to himself, "Oh God, oh God," over and over again.

After a minute that felt like an hour, the turret spoke again.

**"When Ladon died guarding the golden apple tree, Hera cast him into the night sky and he became a constellation."**

The two men breathed a sigh of relief they'd both been holding back.

"So, it's just going to recite weird stories at us now?" Wheatley asked, slowing down his search now that the danger had passed. "Is there some kind of Greek Mythology bug, per chance?"

"Like I said. There's nothing in here." Doug closed the program, spinning his chair around to face Wheatley and the peculiar turret. "It has to be something mechanical."

**"Cassandra was cursed with clairvoyance, nobody heeding her words until it was too late."**

"Right, uh, that's great, really interesting story you got there." Wheatley clambered up, grabbing his tools from his desk. "So I just got to find whatever's broken in this guy, that's making him talk about old legends. Great, this is exactly the kind of thing they hired me for. Right in the job description, 'must keep talking guns from talking about old gods.'"

Wheatley knelt down, placing the turret on a nearby box and opening up his tool kit. Doug sat beside him, too intrigued by whatever was in this thing to go back to his own work. The two sat like that, side by side, checking and rechecking for any sort of flaw. Every so often the turret (who's pain simulators had been turned off) would chime in again, as if nothing was happening.

**"It isn't anger."**

**"The Romans kept the people happy with bread and circuses."**

**"Stop watching me."**

Wheatley paused his search at the last sentence, giving Doug an uncharacteristically serious look. Doug made no movements for a few seconds, before gesturing back to the turret, as if to say "keep going."

So, he did. And the two examined the turret what seemed about one hundred more times before Wheatley sighed.

"There's nothing." He set his tools down, letting them clang on the floor. "There's just no bloody explanation for any of this. It's just, it's just..." He struggled to find the right word. "It's just completely absurd!"

**"That's all I can say."**

The red eye of the turret began to dim, and before they could even react, it had turned off once more. In what seemed to be a recurring pattern this day, the two men spent a few minutes in complete dumbfounded silence.

"Well." Doug spoke up. "We know what's wrong with it now." He shot Wheatley the slightest hint of a smile. Wheatley gave a dry laugh.

"At least we have that one thing sorted out." He held the turret and stood up, rubbing the back of his neck. "But what now? Should we just send it back?"

Doug thought for a moment. "...They'd send it to the incinerator."

The two glanced up, and an unspoken arrangement was made.

* * *

"Good morning," Wheatley proclaimed as he opened the office door with flourish. Up high on the shelf above his desk, their _different_ turret came to life.

**"Live forever,"** the turret responded. Wheatley laughed, throwing himself back into his chair.

"Whatever you say, buddy."

Up on the shelf, the turret focused its lens.

**Author's Note:**

> This was pretty self-indulgent for me, considering I'm a big fan of Wheatley, and Rattmann is one of my favourite characters. And it's fun to write cryptic prophecies, (even if they might be a bit obvious.)


End file.
